I am pleased to announce that beatredundancyblues.co.uk is now officially launched.

beatredundancyblues.co.uk is very similar in content to beatredundancyblues.com with access to Job Sites, Recruitment Sites and Courses Sites, from within the one site. The difference with the .co.uk version, is there is much more opportunity for interaction with you. Let me know what you like about the site and any further help and support you need through your comments and feedback.

As you may be aware from my last post, I recently went to London on Monday 15th of July to meet Her Majesty the Queen and I had the opportunity to speak to her. You can read the full story on my writing blog at http://www.quirkybooks.wordpress.com This was for the CSV 50th Jubilee Celebration. I started working as a Health Buddy for Community Service Volunteers whilst being unemployed and look at where it has led to.

I know redundancy can be difficult and if anyone had said to me when I was first made redundant, that I would be meeting and speaking with HM the Queen in a few years time, I would have laughed and not believed them. When I was made redundant for the second time, my attitude towards what is possible in life, began to change and now I believe that anything is possible. The more I believe that, the more impossibles do become possible. It all starts with baby steps of stretching yourself, your knowledge and your experience. My Grandma says there is no such word as can’t and if you don’t believe there to be, then that is true. Start believing that your dreams can become a reality and then take steps to make it happen.

I am very happy and excited to have been chosen to meet Her Majesty the Queen, at St James’s Palace, on Monday 15th of July.

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, on Facebook or on my other blog http://www.quirkybooks.wordpress.com, you may already know this and a few of you I have mentioned it to in my comments. For the rest of my lovely blog followers, the last update I gave you, was that I had been invited to St James’s Palace in the presence of HM the Queen. I have since had a letter to say I have been chosen to meet HM the Queen.

I have been sent a map of the inside of the Palace and have been told I am group 10, in the Queen Anne Room, to meet the Queen.

There is a red dotted line to indicate which route HM the Queen will take.

There are instructions of what I should say and do when I meet HM the Queen.

I am going there, to celebrate CSV (Community Service Volunteers) 50th anniversary. I do voluntary work as a Health Buddy for CSV and got nominated by my Manager to go.

If someone had told me a few years ago, that in the future I would be meeting HM the Queen at St James’s Palace, I would have laughed and said they had a vivid imagination, or yes, in my dreams. But I did something very important in my life, I changed my attitude and my belief in myself.

When I was made redundant for the second time in my life, in 2009, this was the starting point of that change. I knew from then on, that I was born 100% to write and to help others who have been made redundant to get back into work. It was the start of my creative journey. However, needing money and taking on a succession of temporary jobs, that I wasn’t happy in, took it’s toll, and although I still had these goals in mind, I didn’t do much about them at that time.

By the end of 2009, I got a job as an Assistant Manager of a shop and a couple of months later I was promoted to Shop Manager. The drawback was, most weeks I would be working 60 hours a week instead of my contracted 40.

In October 2010, I got headhunted to work as a Sales Person for more money doing less hours and so I took it. After almost a year of working there, I decided to take a year out from work, to develop myself, my skills, my knowledge and expertise to grow as a person and to finally fulfil my destiny of writing and helping others to get back into work. During that time, I gained all of those and so much more.

Although I am working again in a retail sales job during the day, I have chosen to be in a job as a Sales Person not as a Manager, so my hours are stable and kept to a minimum. The pay is not great but I can focus on building two businesses around my two goals during the evenings and my time off. I now know what action to take to make progress with those two goals. I still have time to do courses and to develop myself as a person. I am continuing on the path to fulfil my dreams and you can do it too. I am living proof that dreams can come true. Never, ever, give up on your own dreams. Believe they are achievable and that anything is possible.

Be blessed with what you have,
fight for what you want,
believe in yourself,
helps others along the way,
take action,
change when you are able to
and never look back.

Keep looking forward because your future is in your hands.
Treat yourself kindly,
look after those who are important in your life,
allow yourself ups and downs,
you are only human.
Above all, love yourself, live life to the max and do what makes you happy over and over again.

Hi Everyone

For those of you who don’t know, I have a Facebook page to support this blog and one of my followers of this page has written a beautiful account of his journey back into work.

“Hello I have been following this page since I was made redundant in September 2012 and Sandra has asked me to say something about my experiences so far .It has certainly beena rollercoaster ride of emotions almost a type of grief when you find yourself at home after so long 21 years for me in the same role however looking back they probably did me a favour .I amlucky in that I had a longstanding art hobby which has run alongside my work and for long people had said go professional but I never had the curage however when the decision was made for me I had no choice One of the first things I did was vounteer at my daughters school helping with an art class which I loved and built a rapport with the kids and staff this also gave me confidence in my own art .I did the usuall trawling the internet to no avil but really knowing my future was in art.On the day I applied for details of a teaching assistant course I went to an open day at an insurance company to talk about customer service roles.I loved this as they told me that experience wasn’t needed just personality and enthusiasm .I applied and was accepted .Now three months later I have completed training and am now learning the job .Its not easy but rewarding and the next six months are crucial.I’ve continued to paint and am exhibiting widely and planning a range of my own greeting cards from my paintings and several outlets are interested .Long term I would to self publish my own cards and have my own business.It hasn’t been easy but I promise you there is life after redundancy and far from beaten I feel released to do new things .I still have down days and I must admit I’m not my own greatest fan but I plogh on .You can catch up with my exploits atwww.Facebook.com/MatthewEvansArtist.Good luck also to Sandra with this great work onward ever onward and best wishes to you all .Stay strong .”

Before you ask me to use a spell checker, as a writer I always check my work for spelling errors but I have purposefully kept Matthew’s account exactly as he has written it, so that you know that I am not fabricating his story. If you wish to see it on Facebook go to http://www.facebook.com/beatredundancyblues

Thanks to Matthew Evans for posting this, it gives great insight and hope to many others. I wish you much success with your artwork and let us know how you get on.

Now that we have settled into the new year, you will probably have noticed a lot of posts about goal setting and how you need to take action in order to move forward with your life. These posts are an invaluable source of information and inspiration and they are absolutely right, if you want to achieve your desired outcome, you need to take the steps to get there by setting goals and then acting on them but in the next few posts I want us to take a look at what may be holding you back from setting goals in the first place.

Sometimes in order for you to move forward you must reflect on the past and assess the present to see what changes need to be made. If you keep doing the same thing then you will always get the same result. If you are not happy with the result then you need to change what you are doing and there is no time like the present, so what are you waiting for?

Let’s consider some of the things that may be holding you back.

Not having the right skills or experience

There is no easy way to say this, if you haven’t got the right skills and experience for the job role that you desire, in these difficult economic times, you need to either obtain them or learn to convert previous experience and learnt skills into transferable experience and skills and if you can’t do that then you probably won’t get a look in because the competition is so tough.

Do not be fooled by a job advert that states: “Previous experience is not essential as full training will be given for the right candidate.”

If the interviewer can get a person with previous experience who has the correct basic skills, the right attitude for the job and is the right fit for the team, then they will go with them instead of someone with little or no experience. When I was a retail manager I recruited my own staff and I advertised for the experience and skills that I required and yes I still got applicants applying with little or no relevant experience and as time is money in business, usually I would sift theses applications out on first look as I had a large number of applicants. Of the applicants that were sifted out there may have been some that had the right attitude or were a good fit for the team but because I didn’t put them through to the interview stage I would never know this, so having the right skills and experience is essential.

When I wasn’t working, on the odd occasion I would apply for a job that was out of my sector and one that I had little or no relevant skills or experience in, just as I thought, I would get a reject letter or worse, nothing at all. Upon analysis, the reason I got a rejection letter was because I appeared on paper to have some of the skills and experience that were relative to the job and some transferable skills but obviously not as good a offering as someone who blatantly had the skills and experience in that sector and therefore I wasn’t surprised I was rejected and took it on the chin. When I received no reply whatsoever, it was because on paper there were barely any skills and experience relevant to the role for which I had applied, so why should the employer bother to reply to me when it looked like I had randomly decided to ‘give it a go’. An employer wouldn’t like this attitude and to be honest neither do I and when I became a manager I understood that and if I were to apply for a job now I would always tailor my CV and Cover Letter to the Job specification and that’s why I get responses when a lot of other people don’t, so if you are struggling to get responses, now you know the secret, why not try it for yourself?

If you want to gain the skills and experience to get a job you desire, you need to do voluntary work, work experience and you may need to take a course as well.

To read about what else may be holding you back be sure to read the next post, until then, whatever you do, stay positive.

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